Of Break Up’s and Hang Over’s

The head’s splitting. The stomach’s either twisted, or stretched. You wouldn’t know. You wouldn’t want to know what’s wrong. The tongue’s arid. It doesn’t want to talk. The eyes are blood red, it doesn’t want to unwrap. The early morning sunshine is no longer pleasant. It’s a transports you to a different hole. A space that is desolate. You become god, you declare yourself to be in hell for the many painful hours to follow. The legs hurt, almost everywhere. The knees are weak, the muscles have tightened up. There is seething anger, terrible despair. The question ponders? Why did I do that? Some call it an alcohol induced delayed reaction. Others call it, a hangover.

There is love. There is this unimaginable sense of togetherness. You feel her hands stroking your neck. A shiver goes up your spine. It’s not lustful, yet it’s border line tempting. You crave for more. You clench her hands, you stroke her hair. Her head rests on your shoulder. It’s not just support, it’s intimacy beyond ecstasy. You wouldn’t want it to end. You wish you could capture this image using the most powerful lens, and frame it on your favorite tangible wall. Yet, the clock ticks. The clock ticks to bring in compromises and arguments. Trust has taken a detour, Love goes hiding. There is intrusion of space, there is lack of privacy, and there are arguments beyond rationality. Love’s gone, distance is in. A fatal SMS, or a well rehearsed monologue. Let’s pull the plug! Some call it a failed relationship, some call it a breakup.

Suddenly, everything you loved in the past takes a holiday to Costa Rica and does not come back. All the remarkably romantic acts that you did, or rather performed, seem juvenile and sappy. You look back in bewilderment, and realize you were marvelously moronic. Social networking sites irritate you. She suddenly appears in every single wall post. She seems happy. She is socializing. You feel like an idiot on a donkey, depressed, angry and totally confused. You see her flashy smiles, and you confuse them for happy ones. At times she looks beautiful again, and you wonder why things went wrong. You berate yourself because she ‘likes’ your friend’s Google Buzz status. Rage engulfs you, how could she be so inconsiderate? Yet, you don’t accept that somewhere down the line, you too were wrong. You have officially become a victim of your own brain-thwarted expectations. You know begin to classify yourself. You feel like, and in the process, have become the ultimate Jackass. You go outside for a smoke. You see a bus with her name on it!

This is where alcohol comes in. Simple Logic, No rocket science. Man’s ultimate escape mechanism. Illusion sets as per proportions consumed. Euphoria follows. Dumb jokes are funnier now. Head feels light. There is an immense urge to let everything out. The opposite sex looks hotter. Testosterone levels seem to higher (at least at a psychological level). The music transports you to a new zone. Maybe, you are having a good time. Since common sense has gone for a siesta, you derive logic between consumption and contentment. the more you consume, the better it will get. Horrifying similar to your failed relationship. You get clingy, clingier and then it gets clumsy. Before you know it, the liver gets into action. Bile, whiskey, beer rum and pancreatic juices muddle up in all the convoluted tubes that keep us alive, and suddenly regret seeps in. The plug pulls up. The putrid cocktail comes out. The head spins for one final time, and then there is a fade out.

All the good times you just vanish without leaving a trail. The clock seems to be slow. Hours don’t pass easy. You are hungry, yet you can’t eat. You hate yourself for being so stupid.
You wish better sense had prevailed. You wish if you could remember the wild night. Present juggernauts the past. The past is a black hole, waiting to be forgotten.

To put it simply, both suck at a very towering level. More often than not, it’s a chain reaction. It’s bizarre, a fatal break up almost all the time leads to a near fatal hangover. History is sour, present sucks and future looks terrible bleak. A break up and a hangover are eternal twins, mystically connected. Let’s simplify, and call it, A Break Over!
Lime Juice and good music might give some relief. And of course, time. Time fixes everything, including the dry tongue.

P.S. I am not drunk. I am perennially single.

Ali, My Friend.

I have known Ali for 7 years now. I remember meeting this puny young boy when dad had moved into our new apartment. His Dad, a very generous entrepreneur used to run a small supermarket right next to our apartment. He had four sons, Ali being the youngest. They were very popular in the neighborhood. All of them possessed the most wonderful smile one could fathom, and each time I went there, Uncle gifted me one chocolate. They all ran the business together, and have done remarkably well.

Last April, if my memory doesn’t fail me, Uncle had met with a fatal accident in Abu Dhabi. He had gone to clear his telephone bills when a car took him out. A lethal crash, and the pleasant face I so often saw, had just left all of us for good.

I would meet Ali everyday. Every time I stepped out of my building, I would see him, hooked to his phone. He would have a wide smile on his face. It’s not that we were best of friends. We hardly fielded conversations, yet we used to meet everyday. A customary ‘Hi’ and a flashy smile just outside my building, was fairly routine.

The young man was now ready to get married. A week back, he had met my elder brother at the supermarket. Ali informed my brother about his wedding. He was a shy young man of 23, eager to start his life with the girl he had met a year back. Lost in love, hoping for a bright start, he clearly had the look of a happy man. He was heading to Iran the very next day. He told my brother that the Nikaah was scheduled sometime this week. We wished him luck. It’s quite surreal to see someone of your age getting hooked up and married. Apparently, in Iran it was quite a common thing to do.

Over the years, I have visited Abu Dhabi on numerous occasions. Over the past six months, I have been here, more or less, trying to find a suitable job. I can safely say that I have mastered the art of planning. Every week, a new plan was hatched. Regrettably, I haven’t yet mastered the art of execution; From Plan A to Plan J, if this trend continues, I shall soon run out of alphabets.

As usual, the day began on a mundane note. I woke up when the Sun was at its peak, Shining away, bright and happy. Considering the fact that my social life is at an all time low, Friday is indeed a day I dread. The world seems frozen yet bright, none of the cars move from their parking space, People sound like sleep-deprived androids. Friday is the day every working human in UAE loves to sleep.

After my prayers, I watched a horrendous Hindi Film called Life Partner. There was this one scene in that movie, when a ridiculously arrogant father in law compared his bride’s IIM Ahmedabad degree to that of any college degree in India. Clearly, I wasn’t in for a good day. Chauvinism, Ear Popping screeching, terrible filmmaking and Fardeen Khan followed. I tested my patience for an hour, and disdainfully, switched off the television.

I got into the virtual world. Spoke to a few friends - the usual everyday conversations. As the day ploughed along, my brother came online. We started discussing about my Plan K, and clearly this was reaching nowhere. Plans were struck down, new ones were made, and in the process of making a decision, a hundred different scenarios were sketched. A lot of effort goes into planning. Firstly one has to set a time line, secondly, everything has to go according to plan, and thirdly a lot of obstacles have to be considered, or maybe even manufactured. It involves faith, brains, and time. Time hasn’t been a factor off late; neither has been my indomitable faith. I was now officially a man, with many a plan. As the discussion stretched to every possible scenario we could comprehend, we arrived at Plan L and Plan M. Dad looked at me, smiled and said ‘let’s go for a walk.’

Just as we got out of our building, it seemed as if the lights went out outside. We figured out that Ali’s Supermarket was shut down. We met the caretaker of that building, and enquired. He told us that Ali had passed away in Iran; he had met with a fatal accident. On a Friday, He had performed his Nikaah just a few days back.

For a second, I felt completely numb. An unexplainable void, a sense of desperation, anger, and absolute helplessness, splurged through me. Both of us froze into oblivion. It was extremely difficult to recover from. I still remember, how my brother told me about his plans. The young man was looking forward to start a new life, paint a new canvas in his life, and suddenly he had vanished, into thin air. At the age of 23, the young man with a mobile phone, and a magical smile, was no more. I looked at the bench where he used to sit, it laid there, empty, without a companion.

It’s sometimes futile to think way ahead of our lives. Such incidents make us realize how important it is to live for today, be with the people we love the most. Death is so frightening sometimes, it’s not the pain that scares, It’s the emptiness that’s terrifying.

For a believer, these things are destined, for an atheist, this is how nature balances out. Yet, it’s unfair. I spoke to dad for about an hour after that. He said, Life doesn’t stop there though, we figure out ways to move on. New chapters unfurl in front of us, terrible grief is often followed by anecdotes of happiness.

Ali My friend, May your soul rest in peace. Amen.

Mystifying Colors

The day began on a very colorful note. As usual, I woke up very late, but it’s hard to blame myself for that. I understand why some organisms hibernate during winters; it’s indeed the best time to sleep. The warmth of your blanket, and also the realization that you don’t have to wake up to face a brooding boss early in the morning is quite blissful. I am enjoying this induced hibernation from tension, stress and work. An aesthetic city, plenty of movies, tea and the occasional kebabs make Delhi the ideal place to chill… Literally!

Anyway, I soon logged into the virtual world and bumped myself into a rather amusing puzzle. Mysteriously, I read colors all around. Dazzling colors, bright and dark, soft and hard. I must say that I love colors. Colors in concept itself excite me. The possibilities are never ending; the pleasure to the eyes is at times too appealing. So, I was curious to figure out was happening. Maybe it was color day. On enquiring among a few friends, I received weird replies. Some said it’s a secret, while some laughed at my ignorance, or rather naiveté. Now, this indeed was intriguing, there were colors all around and I had no clue what the mysterious secret was. Finally, a received a link from one of my seniors, and as I read through the article, I realized that there was a ‘strong social cause’ associated with this whole color ordeal.

A Detroit blog was one of the first to suggest that the color update craze was started by women in Detroit who were trying to raise awareness around Breast Cancer Another blog backed up that notion and included the following Facebook message which reads as follows:
“Some fun is going on…. just write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of breast cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before people wonder why all the girls have a color in their status… Haha.”

So there it was. I had done my Sherlock Holmes routine and unraveled the truth. The mysterious colors where merely a vehicle to promote ‘awareness’ of breast cancer. The more I thought about it, the more I laughed at the sheer idiocy of the idea. The tidal wave of stupidity that followed for the whole day was irritatingly assiduous.
At times I think we have become absolutely numb and tactless. We are ignorant beyond belief, thought process is at an all time low, and like the famous comedian Louis CK said ‘we now live in an amazing world which is wasted on the crappiest generation of spoilt idiots who don’t care’.

First things first, let’s not confuse information for awareness. We live in an information age were news is readily available, but if people fail to dissect and assess this information obtained, it neither serves him nor humanity any purpose. Knowing about a social stigma is one thing, being aware of it is totally different. Does this bra color gimmick make people aware of the causes of breast cancer? Do people realize that late or no pregnancy, birth control pills, substance abuse, lack of breast feeding obesity and lack of exercise are some of the main causes for breast cancer. Long story cut short, do people realize the effects of lifestyle changes on the broadening of such a disease?

If someone is aware of these things, they would try implementing changes in their own lives. But overlapping cultures have changed our very way of living hasn’t it? Alas, there is a parallel line of thought where a lot of women are against pregnancy, citing it as an obstacle to a successful career. While some say its added responsibility and strain. There is no doubt that substance abuse is at an all time high. It’s nothing but a contagious combo of hypocritical ignorance which is truly hard to explain.

If one observes Human history, there have been many revolutionary movements. The bra burning movement in the 70’s, at an ideological level was very potent. It stood for a lot more than the terminology in itself. Very recently, the Pink Chaddi campaign against the Ram Sena gained phenomenal attention. Highly popular, not only was it strong structurally, but also the idea behind the movement was thought provoking. Sadly though, the latest ‘announcing my bra color movement’ makes absolutely no sense, and the fan following is just bewildering. At best it does provides for some voyeuristic pleasure. There is no reasoning or thought behind the whole ordeal, and sadly, people women from all over the world have readily accepted it without a flinch, and more frighteningly, without even a thought.

As a society by default, we take cribbing is taken for granted. We whine about how irresponsible the media is. We abuse the paparazzi, and hurl stones a media houses for their sheer audacity. It’s important to recognize that media regulation is possible only if one cares about his/her own privacy. Millions of users tweet every single day, informing peers and friends about every diminutive facet of their lives. It involves exchange of articles and information, photos and videos. At times though, some people express mood swings and at other times some inform people about the most irrelevant details like what someone got from the nearest supermarket. Dissipation of information is important, but informing people about when they are going to take a dump is not going to bring any sort of revolution.

What the likes of Facebook and twitter have done is something people need to closely introspect. Every photograph, every video and every bit of information one puts up is readily accessible to millions of people all over the world. While most people consider it as a minor hitch in an otherwise profitable venture, mindless acts such as the one above will not help anyone; rather it will modify social norms to a level beyond control, and maybe even beyond repair.

So where does the fault lie? Is it ignorance, lethargy, our mutinous ways of living, cyber space or the human intellect in itself? Is it really difficult to take two minutes off and think about our so called ‘humorous gags’ and the sheer stupidity of ones actions? Religion has often been termed as blinding, but episodes like these tell me that WE as a society never have been so blinded by what’s fed to us. People spend millions on post graduate programs but sadly education from the best universities all over the world do not help us in differentiating stupidity from common sense

At times it’s also a matter of self respect which somehow seems to have evaporated from within us. As one of my sensible friends Ruchika (very few that I have, I realized) commented about the girls who readily flaunted about their bra colors ‘If tomorrow you boys want to know what 'color' bra they are wearing ,and if you ask them casually, they should not call it eve-teasing or misbehaving’.
Social networking is indeed true democracy. There is absolute transparency, at every level, and that includes our own lives.
I surrender to the power of the Web World. It can mystify… and stupify millions!